Letter

From
Guy Cox, University of Sydney

Joan Roughgarden does not draw a clear line between different sorts of homosexuality. Many animals, such as the female bonobos she mentions, show regular homosexual behaviour but this has no bearing on their normal mating and heterosexual reproduction.

Actually Homo sapiens is much the same&colon; males of the species usually have a period of homosexual genital contact between the ages of 10 and 15, and this probably, as she says, fosters group bonding while having no effect on their eventual reproduction. But this (and the bonobos) tell us nothing about men who choose homosexuality as their sole lifetime sexual behaviour. …